Two-in-Three Patients will Book Medical Appointments Online in Five
Years, Accenture Forecasts

CHICAGO--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--Driven by demand for greater convenience, roughly two-in-three patients
(64 percent) are expected to book medical appointments online by the end
of 2019, generating $3.2 billion in added value or potential savings for
U.S. health systems, according to new research
by Accenture
(NYSE:ACN).

“Just as consumers use online tools to book restaurant reservations or
request a cab, patients want the same experience in self-booking a
doctor’s appointment,” said Dipak Patel, managing director of
Accenture’s patient access solutions. “Evidence also shows health
systems can use self-scheduling tools to boost appointment capacity,
reduce costs and/or increase productivity.”

Accenture estimates that by the end of 2019, two-thirds (66 percent) of
U.S. health systems will offer self-scheduling tools for patients to
book, change or cancel their appointments online. Health systems that
offer patients the ability to book their medical appointments online
will be able to divert 80 percent of their appointment volume, on
average, through patient self-scheduling. Accenture estimates 38 percent
of total appointments – or 986 million – will be booked in 2019 using
self-scheduling tools. Self-scheduling tools have the potential to
enable health systems to reallocate as much as $3.2 billion in scheduler
capacity in 2019 alone, based on average salaries and productivity.

According to the research, it takes just under a minute to schedule
medical appointments online, as compared to scheduling an appointment by
phone, which takes an average of 8.1 minutes – with staff transferring
patient calls 63 percent of the time. The research also showed that 40
of the top 100 health systems offered patients the ability to
self-schedule about half of appointments in 2014, as do 10 percent of
smaller U.S. health systems. Across all health systems, Accenture
estimates self-scheduling was offered for only 11 percent of
appointments, and patients exercised this ability only 2.4 percent of
the time, indicating a tremendous opportunity for the adoption of
self-scheduling tools.

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company, with more than 305,000 people serving clients in
more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience,
comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions,
and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies,
Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance
businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of
US$30.0 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2014. Its home page
is www.accenture.com.